4th International Conference on Renewable Energy Gas Technology, REGATEC 2017, takes place 22-23 May in Pacengo (Verona), Italy. The conference revolves around renewable methane and has a technical and industrial focus. For more info www.regatec.org.

Italy is the leading country in Europe when it comes to NGVs (natural gas vehicles) and filling stations for compressed methane. In fact almost 75% of all NGVs in Europe are Italian.

The new Italian decree on biomethane, favouring biomethane as vehicle fuel, will be presented at the conference.

A new platform for cross border biomethane trading will be presented.

There are several synergies between the three sectors (AD, gasification and P2G) that are waiting to be exploited. A whole session in plenary is dedicated to synergies between the different biomethane production paths.

Listen to 60+ leading experts presenting the latest advances within biogas upgrading, gasification/methanation and Power-to-gas. The conference will be opened by the Head of Research and Development of Consorzio Italiano Biogas e Gassificazione and the Eurogas policy advisor.

Get an insight to the renewable methane development in China. Presented by the executive director of China Biogas Association,

Take part in Network Plus, an efficient way to get to know you peers and connect to new business or collaboration partners.

Since natural gas is predicted to overtake the role as the dominating fuel during this century the interest and business opportunities for renewable methane will increase.

Visit the exhibition where leading biogas, gasification and Power-to-gas companies and research institutes will highlight their products and services. On the biogas side all upgrading technologies are present, i.e. chemical scrubbing, organic physical scrubbing, water scrubbing, PSA, membranes and cryogenic upgrading.

The conference takes place in Parchi del Garda, the largest hotel and congress centre in the lake Garda and Verona region. Enjoy the Italian hospitality, the delicious food, the fantastic scenery (the venue is situated 900 m from the shores of lake Garda). Why not combine the conference with a visit to the medieval and romantic city of Verona?

The Italian decree from 2013 regarding biomethane regulations will be replaced by a new one in early 2017. The new decree will favour biomethane as transport fuel.

Italy is the most advanced European country when it comes to nr of filling stations and use of methane (natural gas) as vehicle fuel. Having the infrastructure in place and a public awareness of using methane as vehicle fuel Italy has already overcome the two main barriers for large scale implementation of biomethane as vehicle fuel.

The NGV fleet and number of filling stations continues to grow. 885,000 NGVs in 2014 compared to 970,000 NGVs in 2015. 1,100 CNG and L-CNG/LNG stations in 2015 compared to 990 in 2014. Almost 75% of the European NGV fleet is in Italy.

Since 2016, owners of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in Italy are being encouraged to convert their vehicles to CNG as part of a new round of incentives made available by Italy’s Ministry of Environment. This scheme offers EUR 1.8 million to support alternative fuels.

Italy remains dedicated to the development of NGVs and encourages other countries to follow the leading example of the Italian industry and government.

Italy has 1,391 biogas plants and as the feed-in tariff for green electricity is phased out it’s natural to look for biomethane dedicated to the transportation sector as an alternative. This implies a huge opportunity for biogas upgrading companies.

It’s not a coincidence that we chose Italy as the location for 4th International conference on Renewable Energy Gas Technology, REGATEC 2017. The conference revolves around renewable methane of vehicle fuel quality produced through anaerobic digestion/upgrading, biomass gasification/methanation and Power-to-gas. For more info www.regatec.org

On the 30th of October the SmaRTGas Baltic seminar took place in Malmö, Sweden. The seminar was financed by the Swedish Institute and arranged by Renewtec AB, Sweden in close collaboration with Tallinn Technical University, Lithuanian Energy Institute and Institute of Power Engineering, Poland.

SmaRTGas stands for Small Scale Renewable Methane Technologies based on Gasification and is focused on thermochemical conversion of biomass and waste to biomethane in the ~10 MW scale.

International experts and technology providers highlighted the ongoing technology development while representatives from Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and the European Biogas Association presented the market situation in the Baltic area and in Europe.

Biomethane through thermochemical conversion of woody biomass and waste offers many opportunities of relevance for the Baltic Sea Region since it transfers indigenous low quality resources including wastes into a renewable high quality transport fuel with superior emission data. Biomethane can be produced with the highest conversion efficiency of all second generation biofuels and distributed in an environmentally friendly way through the natural gas grid. Replacing diesel and petrol with biomethane has many advantages such as positive effects on the air quality, the greenhouse gas mitigation, the security of supply, regional development and new job opportunities.

On the 3rd of September Jörgen Held was invited to give a presentation on “The present status and future prospects of biomethane production through biomass gasification” at the European Biogas Association’s workshop on biomethane in Brussels.

The SmaRTGas initiative was presented as way forward to accelerate the technology transfer and the implementation of efficient second generation fuel production.

On the 10th of October Renewtec visited Dr. York Neubauer, head of the Thermochemical Conversion and Process Analysis group at the Department for Energy Technology at Technische Universität Berlin.

Dr. Neubauer’s research is directed towards analysis and cracking of tar components in product gas from biomass gasification plants.

Dr. Neubauer takes part in the BESTF project BioProGReSs where the aim is an industrial demonstration of a new tar reforming solution developed at Chalmers, Sweden. TU Berlin’s part in the project deals with control of the tar reformer through an innovative online tar monitoring tool developed in-house.

Dr. York Neubauer gives Jörgen Held, Renewtec AB a private tour in the different laboratories. Besides equipment for analysis the department has an advanced laboratory for laser spectroscopy and it’s own fludized bed gasifier.

Jörgen Held, Renewtec AB visited Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland and agnion’s pilot plant in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm in Germany on the 29th and 30th of October.

PSI has developed a fluidised bed methanation reactor suitable for production of biomethane in the smaller scale (<100 MWth). The reactor has been tested at the gasification plant in Güssing within the European project Bio-SNG where the whole value chain from Wood chips to biomethane as vechile fuel was demonstrated. Commerical partner is CTU.

agnion has developed and commercialised a small scale gasifier suitable for biomethane production. In the pilot plant in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm has catalytic tar reforming been tested.

Renewtec AB, in collaboration with BioMil AB, conducts 4 case studies on small scale biomethane production based on PSI’s and agnion’s technology.

Research engineer, Marco Senger, agnion (to the right) has just showed the pilot plant to Jörgen Held, Renewtec AB. In the background the catalytic tar reforming can be seen. Tests with automatic addition of active catalyst and removal of deactivated catalyst during operation have been conducted.